Nursultan Nazarbayev

Nursultan Äbishuly Nazarbayev is the President of Kazakhstan. He has been the country's leader since 1989, when he was named First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Kazakh SSR, and was elected the nation's first president following its independence from the Soviet Union in December 1991. In April 2011, Nazarbayev was re-elected to another five-year term with almost 96% of the vote, and is standing for a fifth term in the 2015 election scheduled for April 26. The role of Nazarbayev and his political reforms was acknowledged by Daniel Witt, Vice Chairman of the Eurasia Foundation. He noted: "[President] Nazarbayev has led Kazakhstan through difficult times and into an era ... more on Wikipedia